I Saw Jesus Last Week

I know I promised more about the great catch of fish, and I am working on it, but I couldn't pass up sharing this. This is the text of a "sermon" I shared directly from the heart in the church I used to pastor. It was some time ago, but I believe, or at least hope it is as strong and true as I felt it to be then.

I saw Jesus last week,

Nobody else saw Him but me.

That’s because He wasn’t easy to recognize.

He took the form of a mentally challenged black girl, who lived from paycheck to paycheck wondering what she would drink, smoke, or take to get her through her days until the next check came. This girl had been beaten and taken advantage of and lived in fear of the pimps and perverts on the street who could take her and hurt her, and make her do “bad things.” She found herself in my neighborhood after the buses quit running back to the city. I got a call as I was just sitting down to Supper. You see, Jesus doesn’t always show up at the most opportune times. To minister to Christ, we are many times called to put aside our own comforts, and pleasures so that we may “do it unto the least of these, who are His brothers.”

So I left my family at the table and went to meet this girl/Jesus, and after exhausting all other possibilities that would allow the least expense of effort on my part, I drove the girl home through a wet November snow.

She didn’t look like Jesus, but it was Him all right.

“I was a stranger and you took me in.”

Later that same week, I talked to Jesus on the phone, or at least it may have been Him. He needed money for rent and utilities. It felt too comfortable to be able to say our church has no policy for dealing with such needs.

We may not have the silver and gold, but I made no effort to give what I did have.

“I was hungry and you gave me no meat.”

Jesus keeps crossing my path in one special form; a young man, slow of thought, chronically unemployed with no family (or no family who cares about him), who has also been told he is schizophrenic. He has hinted at the fact that he even prostitutes himself for gay sex. It seems that I have trouble getting away from Jesus in this form. In this particular manifestation, Jesus uses the name of his beloved apostle, John. I first met Him on the south side of the city, when He dropped in at a church there. He came twice asking for money. Then months later at a different church, 35 miles away, He came to see me. He came again last week.

I feel so inadequate. I want to minister to my Lord, but the human form He has taken here is not cute or comely, and it’s hard not to think that He’s taking advantage. I am guilty of giving Him a small amount of money just to get rid of my own Lord. How can I feel that I’ve ministered to my Savior with that kind of attitude?

Turning a deaf ear or a blind eye may truly be a more honest display of judgment or non-ministry than this façade that I have just performed.

Jesus lives in my neighborhood, too. He is the parent of a friend of my daughter. In this case Jesus is both a parent and a child, as a family is being broken apart by divorce.

He is a wife betrayed by adultery . . . a husband and wife struggling through the strains of alcoholic lifestyles. He is a young girl seeing her father leave and a young eight year old boy seeing his father sleep in the spare room . . . a boy who lived to hear cursing and screaming and laughs nervously as he tells of the embarrassing stories of drunkenness in his home.

How do I minister to my Lord in this situation?

I see Jesus on the news all the time.

He is the parent of a kidnapped child.
He is the parent of a young boy gunned down by poor judgment or prejudice.
He is the mother of a child who dies from a tonsillectomy.
He is the parent of a young boy or girl who died from a drug overdose.
Jesus is a homeless person on the street.
He is a runaway boy or girl forced into prostitution for survival.
He is the parent, brother, or sister of a young girl killed in a car accident.

Sometimes, Jesus is just a Jr. high or high school kid struggling everyday to fit in, get along, or to find out who they are.

There is one place that I’m sure Jesus is, but I just haven’t had the guts or the love to visit him. I know he sits in a sterile word of a special unit in a hospital somewhere with doctors and nurses apprehensive to administer medical treatment to Him. His family and friends have all forsaken Him, or act nervously as they visit. You see, in this form Jesus is an AIDS patient. I know He’s there, and I know I should visit Him, but I’m very uncomfortable about it. The trouble is, I know it wasn’t very comfortable on the cross as He died for me.

“I was sick and you visited me not.”

I’ve even worked right beside Jesus, but not as you might think.
Once, He was a security guard wondering if there was something more to build His life on than the strong religiosity of his non-evangelical church upbringing.
He was a young man whose wife had developed heart disease.
He was a widow who had raised three kids alone since she was 35 and was searching for something . . . anything, or just wanted someone to talk to.
He was a partner, with whom I worked, who got into financial problems and then drugs and even went to jail for a time. I failed my Lord miserably that time. I didn’t open my mouth. I didn’t visit. I didn’t even write.

“I was in prison and you visited me not.”

Jesus may even have been the mother who worked at the same company as I, who was charged with, but acquitted of sexual abuse of her daughter. If that was Jesus, I didn’t know how to deal with Him then.

Jesus seems to be all around me.

He’s a single parent struggling with finances, parenthood, and loneliness.
He’s a pregnant, teenaged girl, scared, shunned, trying to decide between abortion, adoption, keeping her baby, or possibly even suicide.
He’s a recently widowed neighbor, grieving and scared of tomorrow.
Jesus is a person just diagnosed with cancer or multiple sclerosis or any other chronically debilitating disease.
Jesus is a child with leukemia . . . or that child’s parents.

Many times Jesus is merely a person abandoned by the world, such as an elderly person left lonely in a nursing home, forgotten by children and family, whose friends have all passed on.

Too many times I try to keep Jesus nameless and faceless as I walk past Him or beside Him at the mall or in the supermarket. I don’t look upon Him. I turn my eyes to the side or to the ground, not wanting to get involved with Him or His life—not wanting to see his distress or need.

There’s just so much of Jesus out there.

You may say, “How can you say that Jesus is an AIDS patient, or a convicted drug dealer, or a pregnant teen or any other of these ugly, unpleasant, pathetic and sinful people of the world?”

Because He told me so. He told me He was all of these in His own Words.

“For I was hungry and you gave me meat: I was thirsty, and you gave me drink: I was a stranger, and you took me in: naked and you clothed me: I was sick and you visited me: I was in prison and you came unto me.”

We wonder “how?”

Then Jesus answers and says, “In as much as you have done it unto the least of these who are my brothers, you have done it unto me.”

But it doesn’t stop there. He also says, “I was hungry and you gave me no meat: I was thirsty and you gave me no drink: I was a stranger and you took me not in: naked and you clothed me not: sick and in prison and you visited me not.”

We then wonder how can this be that we missed so many chances to minister to our Lord and Savior?

And He says with heartbreak in His voice, “In as much as you didn’t do it unto the least of these who are my brothers, you didn’t do it to me.”

Lord, help me to lift up my eyes . . . to look upon you and your need in this world. Help me to recognize you in your need around me every day and help me to minister unto you faithfully and lovingly, no matter what form in which I find you.

Amen.